The Business Gold Rewards Card from American Express OPEN Review

The Business Gold Rewards Card® from American Express OPEN is one of their charge cards where you must pay off the balance each month but get perks like purchase price protection and the AMEX extended warranty.

Get 25,000 Membership Rewards® points after you spend $5,000 in purchases on the Card within the first 3 months of Card Membership

Built with business-sized purchasing power and fast rewards

3X points on airfare purchased directly from airlines

2X points on US purchases for advertising in select media, shipping, at gas stations, and made directly from select computer hardware, software, and cloud computing providers

Up to $100,000 in each category per year, then 1 point

Use points to entertain clients, reward employees, reduce travel costs, or just offset the everyday expenses of moving your business forward

Terms and limitations apply

Business Credit Card Eligibility

Many people aren’t aware of the fact that they can apply for business credit cards, even if they are not a corporation or LLC. Why? Because any individual can be a business as well. The business type is called a sole proprietorship. Maybe you sell items on eBay, Craiglist, or Etsy. Maybe you do some freelancing occasionally. Boom! You’re a sole proprietorship. This is the simplest business entity, but it is fully legit and recognized by the IRS. On a business credit card application, you should use your own legal name as the business name, and your Social Security Number as the Tax ID.

Meeting Minimum Spend Requirements

Some possible ideas are making purchases for others and getting reimbursed, and prepaying bills that allow it like utilities, insurance. I’ve even bought some Forever postage stamps to put me over the top.

So the terms and conditions state:
By submitting this application, you, as an individual and the Authorizing Officer of the Company, (a .. c), and (d) are REPRESENTING THAT ALL CARD(S) ISSUED ON THE ACCOUNT WILL ONLY BE USED FOR COMMERCIAL OR BUSINESS PURPOSES.
How does this work with the sole proprietorship? If your “business” is that you occasionally sell things on craigslist, how can you justify any random purchase as being for your business?

@Curious – For a sole prop, it’s not that cut and dry because there is no legal distinction between you the person and you the business. From Wikipedia:

A sole proprietorship, also known as a sole trader or simply a proprietorship is a type of business entity which is owned and run by one individual and where there is no legal distinction between the owner and the business. All profits and all losses accrue to the owner (subject to taxation specific to the business). All assets of the business are owned by the proprietor and all debts of the business are the proprietors’.

This is a great offer! I got it last November 2009 because I already had to platinum AMEX cards doing $30k/month in business buys. Its a great offer if you can get to the free points, otherwise you will be paying $125 for no reason.

Personally I think the best value that comes from the AMEX rewards program is the Delta Air miles that I can get. 50,000 points will be about 2 airline tickets, depending on when you get the tickets. Two free tickets to me is about $800-$1000 value.. OR you can get $250 in gift cards. Their gift cards are 20k points for $100, but if you get them during a promotional time they are 16k points for $100 gift card.

Overall.. Great deal and easy to obtain if you do most of your spending using credit cards, like us! Maybe we should change our platinum cards to this Gold card also?

Be careful because I had to send them a message to get my free 50k points. Its been almost a year since I was supposed to get the points, but they got them to me right after I asked for them. You would think they would be automatic.

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Rates and terms set on third-party websites are subject to change without notice. Per FTC guidelines, MyMoneyBlog.com has financial relationships with the merchants mentioned. MyMoneyBlog.com is compensated if visitors click on any outbound links and generate sales for the said merchant.

The editorial content on this site is not provided by the companies whose products are featured. Any opinions, analyses, reviews or evaluations provided here are those of the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the Advertiser.